San Antonio College Library

"In Greek Gods, Human Lives, preeminent classicist Mary Lefkowitz reintroduces readers to the literature of ancient Greece. Lefkowitz demonstrates that the Greek myths, although endlessly entertaining, are never frivolous. These stories - as told by Homer, Ovid, Virgil, and many others - offer crucial lessons about human experience. Greek mythology makes vivid the fact that the gods control every aspect of the lives of mortals, but not in ways that...

The gods of Olympus are the most colorful characters of Greek civilization: even in antiquity, they were said to be cruel, oversexed, mad, or just plain silly. Yet for all their foibles and flaws, they proved to be tough survivors, far outlasting classical Greece itself. In Egypt, the Olympian gods claimed to have given birth to pharaohs. In Rome, they led respectable citizens into orgiastic rituals of drink and sex. Under Christianity and Islam they...